Abstract
By enabling people to track their lifestyles, including activity level, sleeping, and diet, technology helps clinicians to treat patients suffering from "lifestyle diseases." However, despite its importance compared to other lifestyle factors, it is not easy to record food intake consistently. Although researchers have attempted to solve this problem, most have not considered its applicability in the clinical context. In this paper, we aim to (1) understand food-journaling practices and (2) explore the applicability of lifestyle data in the clinical context. By observing 20 patients who recorded data including food logs, steps, and sleeping time, we found that patients recorded their food logs diligently, as they were conscious of clinicians. Clinicians were surprised by the high adherence rate of journaling and tried to overlap food data with other data, such as steps, sleeping time, etc. This paper contributes by providing qualitative insights for designing applicable strategies utilizing lifestyle data in the clinical context.